A 2015 tweet in which Donald Trump blasted Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal has resurfaced after details of his own agreement with Tehran leaked —one that reportedly preserves the “status quo” of Iran’s nuclear program and is being derided by critics as a “thorough capitulation.”
Over the past 24 hours, Bloomberg and CNN published what they claim is the full 14-point “memorandum of understanding” between the U.S. and Iran, scheduled for signing Friday in Switzerland. Both outlets published the same text.
The terms include an end to fighting on all fronts and reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the outlets reported. The U.S. will also commit to lifting crippling sanctions on the country, while Iran will pledge to refrain from developing nuclear weapons and maintain the “status quo” on its program. The White House has claimed that at least some of the reported language is inaccurate.
Following this news, social media users dug up a tweet from Trump, posted in September 2015, two months after Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action had been finalized. Obama’s deal restricted Iran’s nuclear program — including by capping uranium enrichment and mandating international inspections — in return for lifting economic sanctions. Trump pulled out of that agreement during his first term.
“The deal with Iran will go down as one of the most incompetent ever made,” Trump, then a private citizen, griped to his followers in 2015. “The U.S. lost on virtually every point. We just don’t win anymore!”
X users flooded the replies, claiming Trump’s 11-year-old tweet applies just as much to his own Iran deal. Some argued that the president had extracted few concessions from Iran, despite months of fighting that has led to thousands of deaths, spiked global fuel prices and strained America’s relationship with its allies.
“Without a full and verifiable dismantlement and termination of Iran’s uranium enrichment program; destroying the long-range ballistic missile arsenal; and cutting off and dismantling the malign proxies that convert the Middle East into the Iranian fief, this memorandum is not worth the paper it’s printed on,” Ariel Cohen, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, posted.
Michael Smetana, a visiting fellow at Oxford University, wrote that Trump’s 2015 tweet will “likely to come back to haunt him” as he’s “ judged by the same standards he applied to Obama’s JCPOA.”
“Guess that was foreshadowing your own cowardly capitulation,” one X user wrote. Another posted: “Well you successfully made the Obama deal look competent.”
Some noted that Trump’s latest rhetoric appears markedly different from before he took office. “I’d love to watch a debate between 2015 Trump and 2026 Trump,” one wrote.
The text of the 14-point deal leaked shortly after Trump announced Sunday that the U.S. and Iran had reached an agreement to end the war launched with Israel in late February.
According to Bloomberg, the agreement includes a U.S. pledge to support “a comprehensive plan” for Iran’s economic development, with financing of at least $300 billion. Iran will also “ immediately” take steps to ensure traffic through the Strait of Hormuz resumes to “the pre-war volume.”
At the G7 Summit Tuesday, Trump said he would read the text of the deal to the press “word by word” in the coming days “so that the press covers it accurately.” He then wrote on Truth Social: “Iran has agreed to never have a Nuclear Weapon! Also, the story that the U.S. is paying Iran 300 million Dollars is Fake News.”
Previously, some of Trump’s hawkish allies, both on Capitol Hill and in the media, had expressed misgivings about the deal’s fine points and the lack of information released about it.
“I am somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming,” Senator Lindsey Graham wrote on X on Sunday.
The same day, Fox News host Mark Levin wrote: “I have asked for days, why can’t we, the people, see the damn MOU? Not through people briefed by an anonymous person. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like this. If it is a great outcome for peace, then release it.”
Administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have vigorously defended the deal. Vance told Fox News on Tuesday that if Iran doesn’t “behave,” then they “don’t get anything.” Meanwhile, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung wrote on X on Wednesday that “the supposed text of the MOU that was obtained by CNN does not reflect the language of the actual MOU.”
Democrats, who have largely argued from the outset that the war is unauthorized and unnecessary, expressed a range of reactions. Some have cautiously welcomed the deal as a way to end the violence and ease economic uncertainty, while others have sharply condemned it.
“Iran gets sanctions relief, the release of frozen funds, the ability to export oil, and a $300 billion reconstruction fund,” California Senator Adam Schiff wrote on X. “The U.S. gets a reiteration of the vague promise Iran won’t develop a nuke. Hard to imagine a more thorough capitulation.”
“The terms seem no better than what Obama secured under the JCPOA nearly a decade ago,” Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, wrote on X. “But today, we can be relieved that gas and food costs will start coming down for Americans. And that no more American or civilian lives will be lost.”
The memorandum is set to be signed by officials from both the U.S. and Iran in Switzerland Friday. A final agreement will then be reached within a minimum of 60 days.
Multiple recent polls indicate that the Iran war is broadly unpopular with Americans. In an Ipsos survey released last month, 61 percent of respondents said that the U.S. made a mistake by using military force against Iran, while just 36 percent said it was the right decision.
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